It was a bad winter that year, 1944. No unit was up to strength. They had taken too many casualties, but that was no excuse. Besides, the Army wasn't interested in excuses. The Army wanted results.

The Germans (Bernie called them Krauts) were ensconced in a French chateau near the border. They had turned the place into a salient guarding an important road. The weather was too foul to call in
air strikes, the armored division tanks were bogged down in mud and artillery was in short supply. Bernie's infantry company would have to take the compound by storm.

The plan was to make the assault under the cover of darkness. They would use the woods to get as close as possible. They hoped to cross the remaining ground with minimum losses. It wasn't much of a
plan, but nobody had a better idea.

The sergeant "volunteered" Bernie for the grappling team which would scale the high wall surrounding the chateau and open the gate from the inside. The entire operation depended upon it.

They made it through the woods without incident and hunkered down just inside the tree line. They awaited the appointed hour. The soldiers checked their equipment, double checked it, triple checked
it. Each man made final preparations according to his own particular faith.

It had been easy thus far. The German sentries had been uncharacteristically lax in their duties. That worried Bernie. "These aren't the Krauts I know," he thought, "I wonder what they're up to."
He may have despised the Germans, but Bernie never made the mistake of underestimating them.

A soldier tripped; his weapon discharged. The element of surprise was lost. The plan fell apart. The lieutenant ordered, "Go, dammit, go!"

Bernie rushed headlong through blinding snowfall. He ran smack into the chateau wall. Dazed, he landed flat on his back. That was probably the safest place to be. Fighting was heavy all around by
then. There was shooting in every direction. A man screamed somewhere in the night. Bernie knew what that meant.

The grappling hook held on the first try. Bernie was the second man up. As he topped the wall, a bullet whined overhead. Bernie discharged a half clip of ammunition into the darkness.

The team dropped down inside the wall, found the gate and felt around for the latch. It wasn't locked. "This has to be a trap," Bernie thought, "Krauts don't make mistakes like that."

The team leader opened the gate and gave the signal — flash, flash, pause, flash. GIs poured into the compound. They found a door. They kicked it down and tossed in a couple of grenades. With a
knot in his stomach and a prayer on his lips, Bernie charged inside.

The chateau was deserted. The Germans had abandoned it, probably the night before. They had taken whatever they could carry and destroyed everything else of value. The only thing they had left
behind was graffiti.

Pvt. Bernstein sat on the floor and cleaned his rifle. He saw the handwriting on the wall, but he didn't understand German.

The problem with telling that story is that the nit-picking details get in the way. For readability's sake I had to streamline the facts. For instance, the stone wall did not surround the entire chateau. It only surrounded a livestock pen attached to the rear of the building by the stables. It was felt that attacking there would be better than a frontal assault on the main building. Although the gates were unlocked, they were stuck or jammed or something. Since the men were losing valuable time trying to fix the problem in the dark, they rammed their way in with a deuce and a half truck. Then, if you can believe it, some piss ant officer wrote them up for damaging government property (the front of the truck).

I hate history//documentaries, no offence. But if YOU wrote a history book?? Would Read. Every. Single. Page. 100000 times over. You make things like this worth reading. You grip the reader, and I really cared to keep reading on what happened. Love it. Truly.

AuthorReply

Comment | 24 words

Mon, March 23rd, 2015 7:03pm

In a sense, I didn't really write that story. I more or less just relayed the story as told to me by a veteran.